Countdown to Christmas Day 11: Spritz Cookies

Happy Dec 11th and Happy Weekend! I'd like to introduce you to my ALL TIME FAVORITE CHRISTMAS COOKIES....SPRITZ...yum yum yum, they are so buttery, melt in your mouth good and loaded with sprinkles! My mom has been making these cookies every year for Christmas since I can remember. She always makes them in the shapes of Christmas trees with green sugar crystals and poinsettias with red sugar crystals. These are one of the traditional cookies that always appears on our Christmas Eve cookie platter at my grandparent's house. I find myself eating these one after another, rotating between tree and poinsettia, tree and poinsettia until I am in a cookie coma.


So it has been a year since I have eaten a spritz cookie, and I decided today was going to be the day that I would once again indulge in my favorite holiday cookie. It was an exciting day in my kitchen because I got to use one of my brand new kitchen toys for the first time, the Wilton Cookie Pro (aka the thing you use to make Spritz Cookies). Well, I guess this really isn't brand new because my sister got it for me last year as a Christmas present, but I'm going to still consider it new, because today was the first time it ever came out of the box. This cookie press has been sitting patiently in my pantry for a year now, waiting to be used for this year's Christmas cookies!


I ripped open the box to find so many cookie shape options to choose from! I wanted to try several of the different shapes so I picked out of a few from the ones you see above. And the first shape on my list was the Christmas tree. I had to stick with the tradition my mom has been making for years and makes some spritz trees of my own.


Next step was to make the cookie dough and then load it into the cookie press. Now the fun begins, well so I thought in the beginning...but it soon turned into being grueling work. My mom has been telling me for years that making these cookies is hard work because the consistency of your dough has to be just right and then you have to press out each cookie individually through the press, then continue to reload the cookie tube with dough and repeat over and over until all the dough has been used. I got through the first tube full of dough pretty good with the Christmas tree shape and I was thinking it wasn't that bad.

I refilled the tube with another batch of dough and put on the poinsettia shape, still doing good. Time to refill the dough a third time, I put on another new shape and this is when the problems started to occur. Each time I would squeeze the handle on the cookie press, the dough wouldn't come out, or the shape would come out only part way creating a partial cookie. From here on out I think I got one good cookie for every two bad cookies and had to keep scraping up my bits of partial cookie shapes and putting them back in my bowl of dough, to be used for the next round.


Finally after refilling my cookie press about 6 or 7 times with dough I had made all of my cookies. Check out how many cookies one batch of dough makes...TONS!


I'm glad I experimented with the different cookie shapes but I definitely know for next time around which ones seem to work easier than the others!


I think Santa would really enjoy this plate full of cookies! But I'm not sure these will be around my kitchen until Dec 24th...I have already eaten probably 10 of them during the course of making all the batches and taking the photos for this post.


I just love all the fun shapes and festive colors and sprinkles variations that you can use to bring these cookies to life.


My cookie jar is now full of spritz cookies. If you want to make a batch of these cookies for your own cookie jar, here's the recipe!

Spritz Cookies (recipe from Wilton)

Ingredients

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon Wilton Pure Vanilla Extract
1/2 teaspoon Wilton No-Color Almond Extract

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• In medium bowl, combine flour and baking powder. In large bowl, beat butter and sugar with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add egg, milk and extracts. Add flour mixture; mix well. Fill cookie press with dough and fit with desired disks; press cookies onto ungreased cookie sheet. Add sprinkles.
• Bake 10-12 minutes or until edges are light golden brown. Cool 2 minutes on cookie sheet; remove to cooling grid and cool completely.
• Makes 7-8 dozen cookies.

ENJOY!